Crochet, Kidney Disease, and Candor

Tag Archives: health

I’m getting a little restless. I hate the whole recuperation stage of laying around all the time, painful movement, painkiller-clouded thoughts, and isolation. There is good news: they were able to place the catheter! The surgery did end up being more invasive than they had planned, and they had to make an incision to find where they could put the catheter, so the recuperation is taking a little longer than we had hoped. However, the catheter is in there and the flush they did worked, so right now it looks like peritoneal dialysis will work. Thank you, everyone, for your thoughts and prayers as we went into this surgery. They were felt.

This is right after the surgery. Thus, the glassy eyes.

Now I just have the sluggish process of recovery to navigate. Unfortunately, painkillers give me anxiety and hallucinations, so I generally start weaning myself off of them the day after a surgery. It means a little more pain, but also fewer dreams about threatening people standing over me and whispering. I’m also walking around all the time. It sounds counterintuitive, but the more I get up and move, the better I feel. I can’t do it for long, in fact, I can’t even sit up for long, but I try to walk every chance I get. However, the worst part of recuperation is the restlessness and depression. It’s hard to be in one place for weeks, and my mind starts to rail against the situations that have brought me here. I know it’s not rational, but I get angry and I start pacing like a wild animal in a cage. Except I’m a little weakling right now, so I mentally pace inside of the bone cage of my brain, and that is even worse.

In addition, the entire world, my entire world, is having babies. You are probably thinking that I am exaggerating, but in my neighborhood ¾ of the women my age are pregnant or just had their babies. In fact, of the maybe six friends with whom I’m closest here, four are pregnant, along with my sister-in-law. Two other sisters-in-law just had a baby or just received confirmation of the baby she is adopting. None of this makes me bitter or angry; that’s not how it works. I am thrilled both for my friends and family and for the joy I will get in having so many more little people in my life, but, as I sit in my bed, constantly shifting position to try to ease the discomfort and trying not to feel depressed, a small part of my mind keeps asking,

“When is it my turn?”

Then comes the real terror:

“What if I don’t get a turn?”

We were working through the steps to adopt when I was told my kidney was failing. Having to stop that process to focus on my own health was the worst part by far of getting sick again. Not being able to have a family is the most tender, the most raw pain I have ever felt, and as I struggle to rise above the physical and emotional lows I’ve hit at the moment, it is uppermost on my mind. I don’t talk about my infertility much, and I’m not putting it up here because I want sympathy or even advice, because it is far too aching a wound to tolerate much of that, but I want this blog to be honest and real, and I feel completely caught up in the pain of this aspect of my shadows right now. This blog can’t always be about overcoming adversity, it’s also about living through it, and I guess I’m just not through this part of it yet.

I’m sorry to lay all of this on you; I try to be positive most of the time. Maybe once I actually start dialysis I will start feeling stronger and better able to deal with my burdens.

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I’m a border girl, linguist, avid reader, devoted crocheter, ghostwriter, two-time kidney transplant recipient, former blind person, new mother, and wife of a filmmaker. I believe with all my heart that happiness is a choice and strength is a habit, and sometimes I am actually able to put that philosophy into action. I want to be better than I am, and the only way I can think of to do that is to look for the beauty and delight that my difficulties throw into sharp relief.

Silver

I had stopped writing
and seldom sang
Magic had withdrawn, or been disguised
by hard gray facts
and bleak procedures
I was alone
darkened
all the silver
in my soul
had been washed out
by machine
leaving only the taste of cold metallic water
and all I knew anymore
was how to be realistic and tired
It was a remembrance
of when I could hear fables in the wind
and would sleep bathed in white moonlight
like a film of beauty on my skin,
that awoke me
Tubes and fluids and dullness of soul
are not me
I hold an argent laugh in my throat
and that is no ordinary thing.